Tagged: Ted Williams
2012 Baseball Trip: The Road to Cooperstown
The National Baseball Hall of Fame
Cooperstown, NY: The road to Cooperstown, New York may not be what you’d expect. In fact, it is almost a like travelling back in time, to a place without super highways and sky scrapers. The road is carved into the landscape of up-state New York, passing farms and classic homes. It’s a journey to a simpler time when baseball was king of all sports…as it should be. The town itself is quaint, with the feel of the turn of the century, but I didn’t see too much of it on the way there, as I was so excited to reach my destination…the National Baseball Hall of Fame…
The actual Hall itself, which is pretty simple and elegant:
I was surprised to see a display of movies that featured baseball:
The rest of the museum was sort of all over the place. It had no real flow to it, and you never really knew what you were going to see next. I’ve been to the Hockey HOF in Toronto, and I guess I was comparing that to the baseball one here in Cooperstown. I was disappointed to find that no other baseball was represented here other than MLB. Nothing on the Minor League, college baseball, international baseball (Olympics or WBC), Little League, Negro Leagues, or anything else. Even the display for the girls baseball was much smaller than I thought it would be. I did enjoy seeing some of the old memorabilia from the 1800’s and to see how the game evolved. There was plenty of room for more displays, though, and maybe recognizing some very good players and teams that will not make the Hall, but still meant a lot to the game of baseball. We had a fun time, and this was something that we just had to do to cross off our baseball bucket list, but I guess I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t more to it. And then seeing the prices in the gift shop simply just ticked me off a bit…
Cooperstown, NY: While in the Coop, checking out Doubleday Field is a must. It’s and old-time throwback stadium, but I really like it’s simplicity. They have a summer college team play there now, so it’s good to see it in use. It’s too bad I couldn’t have seen a game played here, though. We used the parking lot here, too, and just walked to the HOF.
2011 BBT Day 5: Fenway and the Freedom Trail
Fenway Ballpark and Freedom Trail Tours: Boston, MA
Boston is to beautiful and historic not to poke around a bit before we headed southwest for our next ballgame. We started our day by taking the earliest tour of Fenway which was nine in the morning. Nine o’clock is pretty early when your on vacation, but I didn’t have much trouble getting motivated to see this ballpark again. We were given a history of the park and taken on top of the Green Monster. The Monsta’ seats would be a great place to watch a game, but very expensive. We were taken through the Red Sox Hall of Fame and shown some of the baseball artifacts they have inside the park. The tour concluded on the Budweiser balcony with a history of Ted Williams’ longest home run at the park. I would have liked to have gotten on the field, in the dugout and locker room, or even in the press box. They explained that they gave so many tours a day it would disrupt too much to have that traffic all day. It’s still worth it, though, just to be inside the park for a little while longer. When you leave Fenway, you feel incomplete…like part of your soul was left inside, and it’s constantly beckoning you back….
After the Fenway tour was over, we jetted down to the Boston Common to catch the next Freedom Trail tour. We were given a history of the Common, the State House, and were able to see some of the oldest cemetaries in the country. It was fun to hear the real stories behind legendary heroes Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock. I guess I should have paid more attention in history class in school, because some of this stuff sounded new to me. For lunch we ate at Cheers, which still stands as one of my favorite shows of all time. The building didn’t look much like the show, but the bar itself and a lot of paraphernalia were from the set. Our time in Boston ended by seeing the U.S.S. Constitution, or Ol’ Ironsides, which was simply amazing. I really wish we had more time there, as there is so much to see and do.